shook.

"Leave my friend?" he cried, linking his arm in mine; "that I never
could, but thank you all the same, Monsieur."

M. Espinassous insisted, and told Mattia that later they would find the
means to send him to the Conservatoire in Paris, because he would surely
be a great musician!

"Leave Remi? never!"

"Well, then," replied the barber, sorrowfully, "let me give you a book
and you can learn what you do not know from that." He took a book out of
one of the drawers, entitled, "The Theory of Music." It was old and
torn, but what did that matter? Taking a pen, he sat down and wrote on
the first page:

"To a child who, when he becomes celebrated, will remember the barber of
Mendes."

I don't know if there were any other professors of music at Mendes, but
that was the only one we knew, and we never forgot him.

CHAPTER XXIV

FRIENDSHIP THAT IS TRUE

I loved Mattia when we arrived at Mendes, but when we left the town I
loved him even more. I could not tell him before the barber how I felt
when he cried out: "Leave my friend!"

I took his hand and squeezed it as we tramped along.

"It's till death doth us part now, Mattia," I said.

"I knew that long ago," he replied, smiling at me with his great, dark
eyes.

We heard that there was going to be an important cattle fair at Ussel,
so we decided to go there and buy the cow. It was on our way to
Chavanon. We played in every town and village on the road, and by the
time we had reached Ussel we had collected two hundred and forty francs.
We had to economize in every possible manner to save this sum, but
Mattia was just as interested and eager to buy the animal as I. He
wanted it to be white; I wanted brown in memory of poor Rousette. We
both agreed, however, that she must be very gentle and give plenty of
milk.

As neither of us knew by what signs one could tell a good cow, we
decided to employ the services of a veterinarian. We had heard many
stories of late how people had been deceived when buying a cow, and we
did not want to run any risk. It would be an expense to employ a
veterinarian, but that could not be helped. We had heard of one man who
had bought an animal for a very low price and when he had got her home
he found that she had a false tail; another man, so we were told, had
bought a cow which seemed to be in a very healthy state, and had every
appearance of giving plenty of milk, but she only gave two glasses of
milk in twenty-four hour